What a day!

From almost missing not one, but two planes to losing my suitcase. What a day!

Let me start from the beginning…

So my day started bright (not really, it was dark and -3C) and early at 5:30am.

After arriving at the Kelowna airport at around 8:00am, the first obstacle of the day was already upon us. The Air Canada system was down. At first the individuals working at Air Canada began manually writing everything by hand (i.e., boarding passes, baggage tickets, etc.), but (from what I overheard one Air Canada worker saying) security got mad at them so they stopped writing everything and decided to wait 20 minutes before rebooting the system.

Well, that was fine with me, because my flight was at 9:25am, so I still had quite a bite of time. By the time the system began to work again, it was 8:45am and I was ready for my flight.

Except… it had been delayed.

This would have been okay on any other day, except I only had a layover of 50 minutes in Calgary for my next flight. Since my flight in Kelowna was 30 minutes delayed, that meant that I would only have 20 minutes (if the flight arrived on time) to get to my next flight.

Kelowna from the air

So I get to Calgary with 15 minutes to spare (HAH) and book it. I am literally running the fastest I have ran in a long while. I have to make it from terminal A to Gate E89. DO YOU GUYS UNDERSTAND HOW FAR THAT IS?

THIS is how far it is. (Picture gotten from Calgary airport’s website)

Two things I learned while running for dear life. A: I need to up my cardio game. I think my heart gave out a couple of times while running. B: The female agents portrayed in movies that are wearing heels while running are not portrayed accurately. They portray it as being easy “ladeedadeedum I’m running in heels ladeeda.” NOOOOOPE. Running quickly in heels is very hard. IT IS VERY VERY HARD. For a good hot minute I debated whether I should just take my heels off and run in socks. I decided to go against it in the end because I wondered how crazy I would look.

BUT I MADE IT! Thankfully the plane had waited a few minutes because there were 5 of us getting on it. HALLELUJAH! Off to Houston!

The feeling of relief yet utter death all in one picture. Taken seconds after getting to my seat in the plane.

At this point my throat was on fire and my heart was burning.

And I thought to myself “the rest of my flights will be easy peasy”

Problem is, my next flight to San Antonio from Houston began boarding at 5:40pm. My flight arriving into Houston (because of delays) arrived at 6:05pm. My flight was leaving at 6:25pm, that meant I had less than 20 minutes to make it to this plane

AHAHAHAHAHA OH SWEET LORD IS THIS PUNISHMENT FOR NOT EXERCISING THIS YEAR?

Again, I had to run for my life from terminal A to C44. Thankfully, a bit of the distance was covered with a skytrain, so I think I had a little less running to do than compared to the Calgary airport dash.

I arrived at the terminal at 6:15pm (gotta say, I was pretty impressed with myself) and was greeted with a not-so-nice lady who said “well we took you off the passenger list because you weren’t here 20 minutes before your flight. There may not be anymore room left on the plane for you to board.”

“I’M SORRY, WHAT DID YOU SAY?? YOU BEST BE GIVING ME A SEAT SINCE IT WAS YOUR AIRLINE THAT MESSED ME OVER” is what I wanted to say in frustration.

“Could you please check and see if there are any remaining seats?” is what actually ended up coming out of my mouth.

Thankfully this ever so lovely lady found me a seat and I was off to my final destination, San Antonio!

Nothing else could go wrong, right?

“What ELSE happened?” you may ask?

Well, you see, as I was waiting for my baggage at the San Antonio airport, I came to realize something.

My.

Baggage.

Wasn’t.

Here.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Thankfully, two lovely ladies working at the baggage area were so sweet, polite, and helpful. Why can’t everyone working at airports be as amazing as them? They made sure to find where my suitcase was, made sure it was on the next flight to San Antonio (which was 2-3am), and gave me an “overnight care package” since I had no toiletries.

These amazing women told me that someone would deliver it to the hotel I was staying at and *fingers crossed* it would be here by the next day.

So I made my way over to the Pear Tree Inn hotel, got myself some food (finally!), and got ready for bed.

Went to the Sheraton Four Points to get myself some dinner! This was a Mediterranean salad (with artichokes, greens, olives, feta cheese, tomatoes, grilled chicken, and vinaigrette sauce). They even gave me a $4 discount because I came to buy their food even though I was staying at another hotel ahaha

What an adventure-filled day! Here’s to the next few days being great!

Although stuff like this is hard, I feel like challenges need to happen in your life where you’re put in a position where you have to learn because there is no other option. So the way I’m going to look at today would be as a lesson. A lesson that taught me that I need to renew my gym pass or God is going to keep doing this to me over and over until I do 😉

PROFESSIONAL SLEEPER & AVID ADVENTURER

Iman Zahirfar is a blogger who enjoys exploring the hidden corners of the world. In her spare time, she's an avid book reader, and when no one's watching she'll eat as much ice cream as humanly possible.